


Got Stepped On All Over

by whaleofatime



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Batman and Nightwing ride their way in the hearts of the people, Case Fic, Gen, Gratuitous Amount of Horseback Riding, Inner Mongolia - Freeform, Pandemics, Relationship building in the time of pandemics and not-quite-pandemics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24218314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whaleofatime/pseuds/whaleofatime
Summary: What are two good men meant to do when faced with an epidemic within a pandemic?Bruce and Dick take to the steppes and ride across Inner Mongolia, bringing justice, mare's milk, and help in their wake.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 20
Kudos: 100





	Got Stepped On All Over

Usually, Bruce is happy to delegate external work to external workers. He’s a one-man force for justice, full of vim and spite, but he’s also stuffed to the brim with barely-healed bones and a chronic shortage of sleep. Staking a claim to Gotham is so important exactly _because_ it’s the only claim he can actually defend, and so he does it whole-heartedly. That’s the purpose of the Justice League, after all. It’s only by the grace of some god that he isn’t a meta-human, or he’d have the whole world under his sharp purview.

Bruce has toppled his fair share of terrible dictators, and looking at them is a little like looking in a mirror sometimes, so if there is a God maybe she’s got the right of it.

The _thing_ with all the superpowers that make up the League is that while it’s brilliant in times of intergalactic or even international trouble, when a pandemic’s up and about, the Flash being able to run through every city on Earth in under a minute means that he’s potentially the world’s most super spreader, and Superman evacuating buildings needs to make _damn_ sure he sanitises between rescues. Wonder Woman’s all lasso nowadays, because happily divine products are extremely anti-viral, but right now the things that make the strong strong also make them oddly, sharply weak.

They’re living in interesting times, all right.

So when a call comes through that there’s been a horrifying spike in pneumonia-like symptoms in children in Inner Mongolia, everyone's a little… stressed. Flyers are already up and about delivering things that need delivering, anyone with anything approaching healing powers have been dispatched to hotspots, and Bruce is pretty sure the last time he had a full night’s sleep was sometime in January. Here lies yet another problem with an uncertain cause, one that can’t be defeated with a punch or a meeting, and they’re already strung out to capacity.

When needs must, Bruce tries to rise to the occasion. He’s had pneumonia dozens of times before, he speaks Mandarin and Mongolian, and he’s the only one who has and knows how to run a one-man research lab in the middle of a field mission. He’s been trialling a bunch of vaccines on himself too, and he’s still up and kicking, so obviously he’s the best choice.

There’s the opposite of sound agreement during the League conference call.

“You tried how _many_ what-nows?” somebody’s shouting, but Bruce hopes they know him well enough by now to know that when they’re on the BatZoom he blocks all their videos.

“Vaccines. Who else would I try them on? A sample size of one isn’t encouraging, but barring reinfection I do seem to have produced the antibodies, so obviously I am the best choice.”

There’s more raucous shouting that he ignores, but he doesn’t hang up because he knows that everyone on this call also likely had their last full night’s sleep in January.

“Hang on, B, we’re not letting you go into the wilds of Inner Mongolia to identify a new, potentially lethal disease by yourself.” That’s Clark, because he’s the only one who can be cajoling and gently condescending all at once. “I’ll admit the numbers are alarming, but the WHO are going to look into it-”

“Superman, if any organisation could manage the current health crisis, you wouldn’t be up to your shoulders in parts assembling ventilators in Brazil. This is just a courtesy call, not a debate. I’ll be departing ASAP with my equipment once I finish collating the health data.”

They all start arguing again, all at once, and they all make valid points. Bruce doesn’t actually know what he is and isn’t immune to at this point, and if it’s something new then that’s even _more_ of an issue. By virtue of his relative uselessness, though, Bruce _is_ the one in the best position to run recon for an extended period, as well as the one most likely to be able to self-quarantine without leaving thousands to die by his absence. Gotham’s in a good place, because the Bat coming after irresponsible citizens and lawmakers alike and Bruce Wayne coming after unfair labour practices are about 5000 times more effective than the federal government, so he can step up. He should step up.

He will step up.

So it’s a no-brainer.

All the voices shut out all of a sudden, which means one of the administrators has put everyone on mute. He didn’t do it, and Clark would likely sooner eat a bright red Super boot than be _that_ rude to people, which leaves them only with the worrisome woman.

“All right, Batman, we’ll respect your wishes. I have informed Nightwing of your plans, as he’s requested that I share your more exotic missions with him. I’m sure he would love to discuss the situation with you.” Lord, her smug smile is excruciatingly evident in her tone.

Bruce mutes his own mic to groan long and loud and hard, and tries to will away the near-Pavlovian headache that tends to manifest when he finds himself saddled with one of his children for an awful case. 

He unmutes his mic.

“Noted. Thank you for your concern, Wonder Woman. Batman over and out.”

If Dick has to travel up from Bludhaven, there’s a chance Bruce can be off and away before he gets here. That’s fine; a quick getaway is a skill he’s honed over a great many years. He just needs the time-lapse of the distribution of the illness to finish getting mapped against urban areas in the computer, and he can go-

The lights suddenly dim, down to the faint yellow that indicates that the main power and generators 2 through to 5 have been cut off, with just 6 up to keep the computer and general equipment working.

Generator 6 is not linked to the hangar doors, though, so there’s….that.

The desire to scream is almost overwhelming. He knows Diana keeps in contact with more people than his soft human mind can even comprehend, but to even recruit Alfred to her devilish ways… 

Bruce groans again, and irritatedly starts packing the equipment he’ll need as he waits for the arrival of (one of) his prodigal son(s).

The lights come back on to full just as Dick launches himself over the handrail and down a 30-foot drop, because dramatics, if not genes, run in this entire damn family. He’s not even dressed as Nightwing, just as a devastating young man. This many years on, Bruce’s heart still stutters in that instant before Dick hits the ground, because what if _this_ is the time he doesn’t stick the landing?

The Graysons’ terrible death sure did hit them both differently.

“Hey, B,” and it’s just Dick whole and complete, smiling brightly.

“Where’s your mask?” Bruce asks brusquely.

Dick looks startled, before he looks down at his jeans and sweatshirt. “I was going for a more casual look?”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “Not _that_ mask.”

The implication lands, and Dick rolls his eyes like a late echo. “Already off and away in Alfred’s washer, ‘course. Not like I took the crowded way over, anyways. Roads are empty as all hell, and rooftops even emptier. But Bruce, don’t try to irritate me to distraction.” Dick wags his finger at him.

It’s a little sweet, because Dick clearly _had_ been distracted before he’d pulled himself back into focus.

“What’s this I hear from Wonder Woman that you’re running off to Mongolia to try and miracle-cure a mystery sickness?”

Bruce is already hauling up the last rucksack he needs for the trip, though he doesn’t bother to pull up the cowl. “Likely exactly what Diana told you. She was wrong about my needing you or your support, though. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Bruce brushes by him and heads towards the fully-loaded BatWing, banking on being enough of an unpleasant son-of-a-bitch that Dick sighs and gives up on him and goes home where an at least _marginally_ better known disease is running rampant. It’s a technique that’s worked before, enough to have Dick rage at him and storm off and avoid him, and it’s unpleasant every time, but needs just really must sometimes.

The thing about Dick, though, specifically Dick more so than every other person Bruce has had the pleasure and displeasure to have ever met, is his _unbelievable_ knack of having an endless capacity to forgive Bruce without taking any of his shit.

So Dick will be upset and he might leave, but he always finds it within himself to come back, and when he does, he always lets Bruce know all the places where he failed, and inadvertently explains all the ways Bruce could be just a little bit better. He will forgive and it damn well seems like he even forgets all these little injustices, and it’s maddening. 

The concept of endangering one of the world’s best men on a dodgy medical mission out in the steppes? A goddamn laughable concept. Bruce would be delighted to bear a spot of wrath when he comes back instead.

Sometimes, though, the full arc of Dick’s mood after being brushed off goes from anger to acceptance so quickly that Bruce doesn’t get enough time to go off and do the damn-fool thing he’s about to do. Sometimes, like tonight, Bruce sweeps past Dick dramatically, and gets pulled up short by Dick grabbing the back of his cape and tugging.

He comes to a not-very-graceful halt, choked a little around the neck, and looks over his shoulder at Dick with tremendous affront. “Dick, what are you doing?”

Dick just smiles sharply, clearly out through the other side of the angry cycle. “I’m ignoring you being a complete asshole out of some misguided sense of heroism, B, and I’m letting you know that I know you’re trying to get me so annoyed I just leave you. Alfred’s got me full-up with good cheer, and I’m in a good mood, so you’re just shit out of luck.” His voice softens, goes a little sad and round in the edges. “Let me help, Bruce. None of us want you out there alone. _You_ would never let any of us take a case like this alone, so just give in. Okay?”

Bruce knows there are ways out of this. Dick in his infinite trustingness would not expect a sedative dart to the neck, and Bruce could always fall back on his standard operating procedure from years long past and nuke this tentative moment by doubling down on how he doesn’t need anyone and how he doesn’t answer to Dick, who is still little more than a child. There’re a dozen ways Bruce could disentangle himself from this, and they both know this.

Dick still chooses to trust and believe, the way he inevitably always does, and Bruce is short on 3 months’ worth of sleep. All he wants is to take care of the people he needs to take care of. 

Plus, vaccine trial #8 is giving him the sweats, and he feels uncharacteristically desperate to just… relent.

“Get your stuff and get in the Wing. I’m not waiting.”

Of course Dick takes so much longer than is reasonable to grab gear from his room, and of course Bruce sits in the Wing with the engine idling, like all beleaguered parents waiting in their vehicles worldwide. 

With a final hurrah from Alfred who appears with enough packed food to have them camping in luxury for a week, they are finally, finally off.

Air traffic’s the quietest it’s been in _decades_. There’s something surreal about not needing to push the Wing to her upper height limits to stay invisible, instead cruising along like some, ah, passenger plane. They see geese, which is the highlight of their trip, before they finally go up and up and up to evade any hot nonsense Eastern Europe or Russia may be in the mood to throw at them.

At least, that’s Dick’s explanation of their trajectory, after Bruce wakes up from a drugged-scone-induced nap (courtesy of the enormously traitorous Alfred) just in time for them to discuss where to land. Still groggy but decidedly better rested than he was 6 hours ago, Bruce licks the cottonmouth out and intrepidly takes a sip of what he’s hoping isn’t knock-out tea as he looks at the map Dick’s pulled up on the windscreen.

Poison pastry or no, Bruce accepts that the reason why he’d actually _stayed_ asleep is because his eldest is by _far_ the best, most trustworthy driver in the family. It’s been so long since he’s been in a situation where Dick drove that he had forgotten that absolute fact.

“The most cases registered of an unconfirmed respiratory illness is in the capital, but accounting for population density, the pandemic, and the usual rates of pneumonia, it’s not where we need to focus on.” Bruce pulls up a map of the region, and the capital of Inner Mongolia lights up in glowing orange, ‘Hohhot’ written in Papyrus because Tim cannot be trusted with software updates.

At least it’s not Wing-dings.

“We should split up,” Bruce continues after glaring a touch too long at the hideous writing. “You try to get a read on how things are in the hospitals in Hohhot, and I’ll head out into the steppes to touch base with the more rural communities.”

He doesn’t sound excited with the plan, because he already knows he’s not getting away with it.

Dick doesn’t even have the decency to pretend to agree and defer, laughing instead as he starts plotting the course for a landing on a patch of grassland exactly like any other patch of grassland a ways’ way away from the bright city lights. “Yep, B, I definitely broke 15 different traffic laws to get to the Manor in time to stop you from going solo, _just_ to let you ride off into the desert like the lone ranger.” There’s a gentle beep to warn them of some military surveillance equipment in their vicinity, and Dick smoothly drops the Wing into a pretty banked turn that takes them away with a gentleness that wouldn’t have turned even the most hungover tummy. “I took a look at your maps while you were out, and I figure if this thing’s worse for kids and we don’t know where to start, we should just go be pretend doctors and make a circuit of all the little community schools.”

“That’s a good idea.”

_That_ has Dick turning in the pilot’s seat to look at Bruce, clearly shocked. “Wait, what were _you_ planning on doing?” 

“Break into the peoples’ homes at night and take samples from as many children I could get. If I get caught, I would be in costume, and therefore very likely to be mistaken as a nightmare, or potentially a demon.”

There’s peace and quiet for a few moments, and then Dick’s laughing again. It’s an insulting delight.

“Bruce!” Dick pleads, struggling for breath. “ _Please_ say psyche. You cannot have seriously been planning to give every kid in Inner Mongolia nightmares while you steal blood from them!”

Time was short, and what Bruce had was the Batman costume and the general ability to be misconstrued as a demonic entity at first glance. “I would have needed more than just blood samples, to be thorough.” 

The ground spreads out endlessly below them, the sky endlessly above. The grass is blown gently out of the way as the Wing drops into a perfect vertical landing, which is amazing considering Dick is actively wheezing at this point. “Wait till Alfie hears that this was your great plan.” The landing gear hits ground, and they have now made contact with gorgeous, gorgeous Inner Mongolia. “Seems pretty, uhm, intense even for you, B.”

Neither of them move to get up and get out; they’re both just slumped in the admittedly comfortable pilot seats of the Wing, looking out at the rolling hills and more stars than Gotham’s ever, ever seen.

“It’s been an intense time.”

Dick’s laughter softens, peters out as they just keep on sitting and looking out. The swaying grass and endless blank horizon is hugely different to the chaos and stale fear that’s blanketed Gotham and much of the world the past few months, and it’s such a helpless pleasure to not _need_ to think about all of that, right now.

Eventually, Dick gets up and squeezes Bruce’s shoulder. “We’re still hours away from sunrise, B. C’mon, let’s get some sleep, we can start fresh and early.”

Bruce touches the hand on his shoulder, doesn’t dislodge it and doesn’t squeeze it. Just a touch on a touch. “You go first. I’ll be along in a minute.”

Dick relents and wishes him a good night. Bruce just sits there and stares and stares and stares.

Bruce is woken up by the smell of fresh coffee, and it’s a gentler wake-up call than an emergency klaxon or Alfred running down the steps shouting “Master Bruce!” on the 4 occasions they have prevented the apocalypse since February. It’s as disorientating as a slap to his face, and he blinks to a still starry sky as Dick comes up from behind him bearing gifts.

The thermos breathes out steam like a caffeinated dragon, and Bruce is also bestowed with a breakfast sandwich. Double-egg, buttered English muffin, and it’s a touch of classic Alfred magic that it tastes and feels this good after 12 hours and a blitz in the Wing’s ‘microwave’ that’s really a radiation vent for the nuclear engine.

He makes a happy little sound, and it’s echoed by Dick with his bowl of cereal and milk, matching mug of coffee wedged between folded calf and thigh. “Alfred packed like 8 types of cereal, and there’re like boxes and boxes of all sorts of food.” With his unencumbered leg, Dick prods Bruce’s arm with a socked foot. “Have you been up to no good again? This is classic stress cooking Alfred.”

It really is. Bruce knows with the force of religious fervour that if he digs around, he _will_ find white chocolate and raspberry cookies. “It’s been a busy time with the League.” And the world. “I told him he didn’t need to worry.”

Dick snorts as he gulps down the disgusting dregs of cereal milk. “He worries when you worry and you’re always worrying so he’s always worried. It’s a cycle of whole-ass adults not knowing how to tell each other when you’re freaking out.” Dick prods his side again. “It’s sweet, but you also seriously need to keep him and us more updated, y’know.” The prodding escalates. “You can’t keep doing these things to yourself by yourself, B.”

Bruce catches an ankle, squeezes it lightly, and puts it aside. “It’s my job.”

Dick, when he snorts, can get awfully loud exclusively because when he decides to be undignified he goes extremely all out. Bruce’s ears might be _ringing_ , and Dick doesn’t even look apologetic. “You don’t have a job, B, you’re a billionaire bachelor man. _Everything_ you do in your life is an extracurricular activity. Batmanning, the Justice League, picking up orphans left and right, none of it’s your responsibility.” The long leg retracts, Dick now curled up like a half-measure spider, sipping his coffee like he hasn’t said anything insane at all. “So, y’know, just take it easy, let the rest of us carry our own weight.”

It’s madness. Bruce has been shot and been less shocked. Bruce has been proposed to by aliens on intergalactic missions and been less taken aback. “Dick, what do you _mean_ , it isn’t my responsibility?” It’s been nothing less than an absolute honour, a literal _privilege_ , to have been able to raise Dick, to give his children a home. Can one’s reason for living really be called an extra-curricular activity?

It’s the whole curricular, surely.

An alert pings! on the dashboard, and Dick doesn’t bother with a response for a point he feels he’s made plenty clear. “That’s our queue, big guy. The school by here opens in 3 hours, and it serves the entire district so we need to get there early if we want to get our cover story straight.”

“There’s a herdsman I made arrangements with already, 2 miles out form here. He’ll have horses ready for us.” Bruce polishes off the last of his breakfast and coffee, and neatly puts aside what Dick thinks he should and shouldn’t do for a more thorough look-over later. “How’s your Mongolian?”

“Horrible, I’m sure no Damian,” Dick says cheerfully. “But my Mandarin’s not too bad. You wanna be the local guide and I can be the cool doctor from a big city?”

It’s as good an idea as any; Bruce hadn’t exactly been worried about cover stories with his night terror plans. He gets to his feet, and tries to avoid brushing crumbs to the floor. “We’re going to need actual disguises.”

In a terrifying show of skill and disdain for normal human conduct, Dick just vaults over the back of his chair, cereal bowl in one hand and empty mug in the crook of an elbow. “I’ve heard the stories, B. Time to whip out the beard-wig?”

Walking like a much more reasonable person towards the kit he’d brought with him, Bruce rolls his eyes. “Beards prevent the correct application of a face mask, Dick.” He presses a button, and a 57-piece sfx makeup collection tailored for (literally) every occasion pops out of a locked chest. “And it’s culturally uncommon to have full beards here, so I’ll just make do.”

Dick doesn’t need much of a disguise; he’s a little ambiguous-looking at the best of times, and the force of his personality is such that generally people’s impression of him are just soft floppy hair and a killer smile.

Bruce, meanwhile, would need a full face of prosthetics just to stay under the radar. What he _has_ is fake tan and eyebrow gel and dark brown contact lenses, but he’s done more with less, so.

At least by the time they reach the herder’s campsite and are welcomed by a smiling man built so strong and compactly that even with his affected stoop Bruce towers over him, Dick’s gotten used enough to the patched-together look to stop bursting into laughter every time Bruce turns to look at him.

Gantulga bullies them into his home for some tea when they arrive, provides a wonderful opportunity for Bruce to relearn the sounds he’s forgotten in his Mongolian, and cheerfully accepts that Bruce is an oddball guide originally from a nomadic tribe close to the Mongolian-Russian border, who found himself here of all places because he fell in love with a woman from Hohhot. 

“It’s the same for me,” the man had said, grinning widely when his wife lightly smacks his shoulder. “And the land here knows no borders. Thank you for coming to look after our children.”

Dick is left out of the loop, because a shared language is a terribly powerful bond against present and conceptual oppressors, and Bruce tells Gantulga with as much seriousness as he can that, “It is my job to take care of you.”

They leave just a little past dawn on two horses, with two more carrying their equipment, and Gantulga waves them off with well wishes for both them and his horses before he returns to his herd and his work and his family. As the testy gelding picks a gait that means the wooden saddle will eventually physically castrate him, Bruce sets their course for the little wooden school building set close to the blossom of summer tents of nomadic herders, and thinks about the duty of care he imposes on himself.

In the fresh air, with his son whipping about on a stallion that has taken a liking to a kindred spirit, Bruce figures that for all his usual angst, protecting people that need protecting isn’t a burden that will ever get heavy enough to put down.

They ride.

Arriving at the school unannounced would ordinarily be a big problem, but these are unusual times. With some official-looking documents printed on the Wing and Dick’s ability to charm absolutely anything breathing, the stressed-out headmaster gives them his blessing to collect samples from all the children. The reach of a global pandemic has struggled to get out this far away from dense cities, but whatever’s in the air right now is doing a number on his kids and it’s clear the man needs a nap and a solution.

They can’t exactly provide him with either right now, but part of the reason the horses’ saddles are so heavy is because Bruce has brought along all the equipment and medication that he thought even had a chance of helping. Dropping cutting-edge miniaturised air filters in Inner Mongolia is a big risk given a government that’s infamous for loathing external intervention, but the equipment is designed to look cheap as all hell and break down irretrievably if a remote kill switch is tripped, so Batman’s covered his bases as best he can.

Even if he couldn’t, it wouldn’t exactly be the first or even the hundredth time he goes against the wishes of the authorities. If push came to shove and tomorrow he had to do a fly-by in a helicopter dropping nebulizers for 100,000 people, then that’s what he would do. 

He’s startled out of his thoughts by Dick gently tapping him on the back. “C’mon, B, let’s get the kit set up. Kids are gonna be coming in soon, you don’t want to scare ‘em with your brooding.”

The little classroom doesn’t have an electrical outlet, and has no furniture that suits anybody over 5’5, but Dick still looks like he belongs in his neatly-pressed white coat and nitrile gloves. The plan is simple: get as many samples as possible. Dick’s already looking picture-perfect as a doctor literally anybody would trust, energetic and dependable. 

Bruce is prepping the ‘gift bags’ full of therapeutic medication, bits of tech, and hyper-nutritious candy, ready to be given out to every patient. “Even fully dressed up I have never managed to scare a child, so I’m not worried,” he says, drawing wonky teddy bears and butterflies on the plastic wrapping with a BatSharpie. Honestly, Dick’s plan is genius. When he had been determined to go in as nightmare fuel, he had just planned to leave the care boxes at the front door with some official looking stamp from the government and hope that people wouldn’t throw it away. Instead all the children who come to them get to go away with chocolate ration bars that only barely can’t resuscitate the dead and air filtration systems that NASA would fight bears for.

The testing equipment they left on the ship, because while it isn’t hard to look under-funded and hard-done-by when all you have on you is some cotton swabs and bits of tack, the PCR machine running on solar power would stand out significantly more. Dick’s disinfecting the ever-loving hell out of the chairs and tables when he hears Bruce’s response, and he’s quick to flash a smile. “It’s your BDE, I guess. It’s kinda amazing that it was switched on so strong even when I first saw you.”

Unwilling to admit that he has no idea what in the hell a BDE is, Bruce does a furtive Google search while pretending to go through the school registration list. It’s a strange revelation.

“What does the size of a dick have to do with anything?” He’s trying to sound normal while he wonders if he’d done anything inappropriate that night at the circus to deserve this.

“Close, B, but not quite. I meant Big Dad Energy.” In the distance, the sound of horses’ hooves comes closer and closer, heralding the arrival of the children. It’s almost time to start, and Dick takes a seat by his stash of needles. “It’s weird to think ‘bout it now, but I know that when kids see Batman they see somebody who’ll take care of them no matter what.” 

There’s a _slam!_ as the front door to the little wooden schoolhouse swings open, and the excited chatter of children filters through. Dick, however, is not done dealing body blows to the state of Bruce’s head, even if he sounds absent-minded as he does it. “I think I saw it too, that first time, even out of uniform. Funny, huh?”

The door to the classroom is pulled open by the harried headmaster while a gaggle of children stare curiously at them, and Bruce goes straight to one knee to address them at face level about what’ll be happening today. He doesn’t get to ask what’s so funny about Dick saying the single most inhumanly complimentary thing Bruce has ever heard, nor does he get to ask if Dick still sees the same thing now.

It’s yet another thing to ponder over later; for now, he just tells the children that he is Bat-Erdene (of course), and that he will help the doctor help them.

Getting stuck with a needle and losing a bit of blood is a novel experience for many of the kids, so Bruce lets them hold his hand while Dick does quick, neat work, and takes special care to wince or go ‘Ow!’ dramatically whenever a child squeezes him hard.

It ends up with the children (and Dick) laughing at him, and telling him kindly that Bat(-Erdene) is not a strong man but that’s all right because he gives them treats. 

By the time they’re herded outside to have lunch along with the kids, they have 25 samples, and Dick has no less than 3 kids sitting on his lap as they draw horses and people in the dirt, babbling at each other in mutually-unintelligible languages through thin barriers of surgical masks.

Going by just temperature, nobody here has a fever, but half the kids complained furtively to Bat-Erdene that they cough a lot a _lot_ in the early mornings, and their parents worry because something unpleasant is spreading across the world and what if it has spread to them?

It’s a lot to think about, but the absence of any signs of infection is… encouraging. Somewhat. There’s a lot that he can do if it’s an environmental hazard, after all. 

For example,

“Doctor! That’s dangerous!”

Dick has the gall to just _wink_ at him as he walks around on his hands, a horde of children screaming and laughing as they hang on to his fluttering legs. In the near distance, the loud, tired sigh of the headmaster is a feeling that Bruce can very deeply relate to.

The headmaster and five separate sets of parents offer them dinner and lodging for the night, and they beg off all of them with the excuse that they needed to ride hard to get to the next little school which is over a day’s riding away. They nevertheless are sent on their way with bottles and bottles of mare’s milk and a gentle lecture on how to brush down their horses properly, the whole school wishing them a safe journey as they disappear into the endless rolling hills that lie between them and their next destination.

Once they’re far away enough that a quick scan reveals them to be sufficiently isolated in the twilight, Bruce and Dick abruptly drop the mannerisms and postures that marked the Doctor and Bat-Erdene, with Dick unbuttoning the high collar of his jacket and Bruce coming out of his slouch. Camp is another hour’s ride away, where the BatWing will be waiting and the horses can be settled down for the night. So far, so successful, and Bruce is willing to admit to himself if to no one else that having company for this mission has made it actually, genuinely pleasant.

Dick breaks the silence first when he whistles at the moon rising from the open horizon, massive and solitary and quietly terrifying. “You don’t get a view like that in Gotham, do you?”

It is, indeed, a hell of a sight. With grasslands stretching out every which way, there’s nothing for the human eye to use for scale and context. It’s just this giant glowing thing that could be a mile or an eternity away, rising like a lamp under the blanket of night. 

At the crest of a gentle hill they draw to a stop to let the sight sink in, two men and their four horses and this one mission. Dick looks over at Bruce, all aglow with a healthy tan developed after an afternoon’s worth of running after children while shouting in cheerful broken Mongolian, and he looks more like the embodiment of hope than any superhuman Bruce has ever met. “I’m glad you let me talk you into taking me along, B.”

The words are the wrong way around! Bruce is the one who’s glad that on the worst day of Dick’s life, he looked at Bruce and saw someone worth believing in! That just yesterday he looked into the depths of Bruce’s obstinacy and still decided to help!

Those words are old and awkward and heavy, though, so Bruce just slumps in his astonishingly uncomfortable saddle and tries not to smile too obviously. “There’s no one I’d rather have with me here, Dick,” he says quietly.

And then, less quietly because this is urgent and an ever-present danger for every parent with more than one child, “Don’t tell the others.”

Dick rolls his eyes, and nudges his horse into a quick trot. “I know, B, can’t let your favorite find out you just said that.”

He’s off, rolling into a hard full-out gallop as the pack horses clatter and bang after him with their lighter saddle bags, a wild thing into the moonlight, leaving Bruce to ponder over yet another mystery: who the hell is meant to be his favourite, and though he fundamentally does not have one, why would Dick assume it wasn’t him?

The mystery respiratory sickness had better be easier to uncover than whatever has Dick feeling like this, because Bruce is only one man and he’s not even a good one.

By the fourth school they get to, tales of their exploits have spread ahead of them on the wings of traveling herdsmen. This school’s in a proper town, with half a dozen summer _gers_ dotting the grasslands just past the little road that has a grocery store and the one post office. There’s even a bit of a welcoming committee, kids on horseback racing out to meet them the minute they come within view.

Dick and their pack horses are pretty happy with the attention, breaking into little races, sprinting off this way and that while Bruce’s decidedly more stand-offish horse ignores all the cheer to keep stolidly plodding towards town. He spots yet more people on horseback, adults this time in bright dress, and rides up to meet them and introduce himself as the ‘local guide’. 

Some of the faces even look familiar, which means that even with them both going at maximum speed, a bunch of people casually outraced them to get here and apparently organised this warm, warm welcome.

There’s a fearsome woman who stands on the ground but somehow manages to look about three times as imposing as the men on their horses around her, and at first sight Bruce’s brain registers _matriarch_ as loudly as a scream in the ear. He’s willing to put money on ‘headmistress’, given the look of awe and trepidation of the younger horsemen around her, and makes haste to greet her.

Her name is Narantsetseg, tall and proud as the sunflower she’s named after, enduring like the fields and fields of the stuff that they’ve ridden through to get here, and she tells him that while he and the Doctor are greatly welcomed to their little town, they would need to do a little more than just test the children.

Bruce doesn’t let the unease show on his face, but he does move back slightly to maintain a sightline on Dick, who’s glancing over with false casualness. Is she connected to the government in some way, and she knows that they’ve been falsifying their credentials? Luckily, looking gruff and unmoved is his specialty as far as expressions go, and he just asks her to explain.

At an imperious wave of her hand the wall of horses part, and there is a line of red-cheeked young women in all their finery. As one, they all surreptitiously sneak a glance at Dick who is a juggling three water bottles while going at a fast trot, much to the delight of the children. 

“We have heard that the Doctor is single, and in need of a wife,” Narantsetseg tells him. “You won’t find better women anywhere else, and none harder working.”

Somebody in the back pipes up, and his face is vaguely familiar to Bruce. “The Doctor doesn’t speak Mongolian, but he’s good with children! Askaa took a needle and he didn’t even cry afterwards!”

There’s a lot of impressed murmuring, and Bruce is left to wonder how badly dear Askaa usually takes to getting jabs, and how his father got to this town so quickly.

“I cannot speak for the Doctor,” he tells them, trying to barter for peace. “He’s from the city; I don’t know what he wants in his women. You know how these city-types are.”

Askaa’s father will _not_ be stopped, though, and Bruce wants to smack him. “He also helped fix the engine of my truck, along with you, Bat-Erdene. His doctor hands got dirty, and he didn’t even mind! And he’s _strong_.” The man is really hitting his stride, and sounds alarmingly starry-eyed. “He lifted two of my sheep without blinking.”

The impressed murmuring gets louder, and while Bruce agrees with the sentiment (Dick is, indeed, a very good boy), he’s less fond of how much attention they’re getting. “I would be happy to translate for all of you, but he is on his doctoring mission and he can’t stay around for long-”

He’s cut off by a sharp scream that has him spinning around and dropping into a ready crouch, just in time to see a girl get unseated when her horse startles at a rabbit leaping out of its burrow. It’s not a long way to the ground, and Bruce already sees her righting herself to take the fall well, but that’s not what happens.

What happens is: Dick leaps off his stallion onto her horse in the blink of an eye, holding on to the bucking horse by thigh strength alone as he pivots in the saddle till he’s sticking out at a right angle, catching the girl by her waist in a brilliant show of skill and instinctive heroism.

The timing is wild; the chatter amongst the adults is at a fever-pitch, with some outright cheering and applauding, and Bruce is pretty sure that any hope of keeping a low profile here is now extremely low. 

Narantsetseg steps towards Bruce, and a hush falls over the assembled adults. She touches him on the arm, expression serious and serene. “Bat-Erdene,” she calls him.

“Yes?” he answers helplessly.

“Let the Doctor know that I am a widow, and that I would be happy to welcome him into my home.”

  
  


And that is that on that.

  
  


The days progress in much the same chaotic, fond way; sometimes the distance they have to cross takes days by horse, and they can’t just use the Wing to zip around the whole time because the horses tend to spook if they had to fly for more than just a couple of hours. Fortunately, between the fresh air, ceaseless good company, and the frighteningly invigorating experience of being on a semi-wild horse that on a whim can and will try to kill you, time out in the steppes gives them plenty of opportunities to work out what they know so far.

Over 200 samples taken from a huge transect stretching from just outside of Hohhot to the actual literal godforsaken Gobi desert, and the picture’s become somewhat clearer. Two weeks in and they find that the bulk of the worst cases are focused in the Ordos desert, over a hundred miles away from where they first touched down. By this point both Dick and Bruce have ridden the most they ever have in their lives, their thighs might well have been cast from steel, and the sensation of a non-aching groin is a distant, distant dream.

Dick can literally snipe a rabbit from horseback with his stallion going at full gallop; he swears that he can do it while standing on the saddle, and for one crazed moment Bruce was extremely tempted to let Dick try. Common sense that sounds like Alfred stays his stupid tongue, but there’s plenty to be impressed with by the way Dick is on a horse and on a mission. 

It doesn’t really remind Bruce of days long gone when it was just him and Alfred and the first Robin, because Dick isn’t a child anymore, has just grown better and better with time and it drives home again and again that whatever Bruce’s doubts about everything he has ever done in his entire life, Dick did become a spectacular adult and Bruce got the pleasure of being there and seeing it happen. 

They’re riding towards the Wing now, with the last batch of another 15 samples from the last schoolhouse in Bruce’s saddlebag and another dozen bottles of mare’s milk clickety-clacketing on Black Thunder, their small pack horse who has never met a man he would not bite. His name is courtesy of the first time the small black horse had bitten Bruce’s knee, going for it so hard that Bruce’s pained cursing had thundered across the plains. Black Thunder is a blight on what would otherwise have been a very pleasant series of rides, and is the only one they have officially named because Bruce’s horse responds to ‘horse’, Dick’s responds to ‘baby’, and their other pack horse would sweetly come trotting up to them at ‘the nice one’.

Bruce is maneuvering closer to Dick to share the latest update on the air composition breakdown from all 200 odd filters, but he has to hold the data pad high up in the air when Black Thunder comes by for fear of losing yet another piece of him to the cursed thing. Fortunately, instead of almost-murder the terrible beast appears to just want some head scratches from Dick this time.

“B, if you keep scowling at him of course lil B’s gonna feel antagonised,” Dick tells him jovially as he leans down to pet the demon. 

If Bruce had tried a similar move he would have lost all his fingers and maybe even a few toes, but he’s got too much dignity to do more than be a bit huffy about it. “I know a crazed villain when I see one, Dick,” is all he will say on _that_ , thank you very much. “As I was saying, the sickness is pretty constrained to just the Ordos. Your bacterial and viral cultures didn’t yield any results, so I cross-referenced the early instances of respiratory distress against any recent human activity in the area; a new supermassive coal mine opened up just before the first cases started cropping up, and it’s our most likely culprit.”

Dick lets go of Black Thunder despite the sad little whinny, and pulls out a notepad from his breast pocket. His police training means that no amount of technology Bruce throws at him can stop Dick from writing down his thoughts, but fortunately Dick’s handwriting and concept of ‘helpful notes’ are literally illegible and indecipherable to anyone except for him, so it doesn’t leave much of a paper trail. The bigger question is how he manages to write at all while horseback-riding, but Bruce is a man who's learned how to accept miracles at face value.

“This area’s rich as hell in coal, what makes you think this specific mine’s the problem?” The _fwip-fwip-fwip_ of pages on a spiral-bound notebook match the pace of his horse’s trot. “The filters haven’t logged a dangerously high level of carbon monoxide or coal waste products, and there’s been no record of increased smog.” He winces. “And B, you know I’m not exactly a Tim-level lab tech. Maybe you can re-do the cultures to double-check.”

“I would stake my life on the work you’ve done,” Bruce says sharply, as he’s found himself more and more wont to do every time Dick says anything that even slightly indicates that he regards himself as lacking in some wildly incorrect way. “Also, Oracle did some digging into this new company. It’s half a dozen shell companies away from Lex Corp, so it’s questionable that they’re actually mining coal, and even more questionable that they’re doing it with a care for the people living here.”

Aerosolised mystery kryptonite is clogging the air, potentially, and Bruce is so thankful that his general predisposition for lone-working and paranoia meant that it isn’t Superman or Kara who came zooming by to help in the area. He already wants to slap a mask on Dick and tell him to breathe less, and Dick’s absolutely built to last through worse things. They would need to do more testing to know for sure, but the air filters they’ve been handing out like candy are designed to extract any particulate matter so there’s hope yet that the things will help.

Pick up of the equipments' just become a lot more important though, if they have hundreds of traps out catching idle Kryptonite. Maybe this will be the perfect occasion for a ghoulish Bat to just burst into and out of _gers_ , hmm.

In the distance, the shielding rolls off of the Wing because they’ve breached her perimeter and been recognised as themselves, glinting in the sunset as night overtakes day with startling quickness out here in the desert. In what has become tradition by now, Dick takes the last couple hundred yards at a dead gallop, Baby becoming a blur of glossy brown, and Bruce compels Horse to run after him, because at this point in their adventure few things ring as fundamentally true in the head as the sheer exhilarating joy of being a man on a horse with all six legs off the ground.

It’s a time for thoughts to rapidly arrange themselves, and by the time they come up to a halt right by the ship, Dick’s got his notebook tucked away and a look of sublime thoughtfulness on his face. “What’s the relationship like between Wayne Enterprise and the Chinese government, B?”

Bruce dismounts as soon as Horse comes to a halt, because he’ll never stop feeling faintly apologetic for being so heavy a man on so small a beast, and he’s just left to look up at Dick with the moon at his back. “You know I’ve always had a problem with authoritarian figures,” Bruce says with a bitchy little grin. The steppes encourage a type of wildness in him that’s very different to the stoops and cornices of Gotham; he feels a lot more teeth than shadow here.

Dick’s at home here in the grasslands the way he’s at home on the trapeze and at the Manor and at Bludhaven PD, along with the dozen little niches he’s sprouted roots in and made better. Dick’s always been all teeth, and it’s only usually a smile. “What do you say, up for a bit of breaking and entering, Mister Bat-Erdene?”

Bruce is already heading for the open loading bay, excited to get the sand out of his hair and cold cream on his thighs and Batman on him. “Thought you’d never ask, Doctor.”

The thigh guards barely fit now on Bruce, and the fabric stretching across Nightwing’s legs are pulled so taut over new muscle that it looks even more, ah, provocative than usual.

Bruce tries to convince Dick to wear Bruce’s larger under armour instead, but Dick ignores him as he takes a dozen pictures of his new-and-improved legs to share on the family group chat. 

They leave the horses at their campsite, and over the duration of the flight to the facility, Bruce forcibly ignores no less than 15 pictures from both Jason and Damian doing squats with increasingly heavy weights in an effort to not be shown up.

Everyone comes together and admits that Cass probably takes it, when there’s a short video of her having Alfred on one shoulder and Steph on the other going down and coming back up without breaking into even the littlest bit of sweat.

It’s a weird but exceedingly pleasant reminder of the home to look forward to once they wrap up here, and it takes more will than it should’ve to not just send a bunch of missiles screaming into the accursed mine run by the accursed men. Instead, they land well before the perimeter alarms, and run over the plan.

“We’re going to verify what it is they’re mining, and then reconvene and plan our next step.” This is exclusively a recon mission, despite his personal feelings. Bruce doesn’t have the jurisdiction to wreck merry hell here, and if there _is_ some important mineral vein down there, even if they shut down this mine they would just have to deal with another one. He can’t even just buy up all the land, because losing land to foreign entities isn’t the Done thing in these parts, and Bruce just has to unfortunately admit that his hands are extremely tied here. 

Dick doesn’t seem so eager to go along with the plan. “If we just leave it as is, what’s going to stop them from ramping up production and taking out more kids, B? No, I say we just shut things down right here, right now.”

All teeth.

Bruce tries not to lose his stupid temper, but it’s hard going. “If we blow up the mine now, what stops them from coming back? What stops them from bringing in mercenaries and weapons and making the area a war zone to protect whatever it is they’re mining?” He scowls, but tries to keep his voice even. “Not doing anything means short-term losses and long-term gains. You need to listen to me, Nightwing.”

It’s not a popular opinion. Dick has got a scowl that looks out of place on his face, a snarl to the edge of a lip. “No, B, you need to listen to _me_ . With everything else that’s going on in the world right now, no one’s got any resources to spare to check this place out. The only thing capping production is going to be Luthor’s goodwill, and there’s nothing good about _that_.” 

They glare at each other, on the cusp of a fight, before Nightwing exhales and holds both hands up in a plea for some calm. “Look, I know I’m not exactly the genius strategist type or like, even in the top half of most-skilled-Bat-associates, but I’ve got a plan and can you just _listen_ to it before you shoot me down and insult me?”

The kryptonite’s gone to Dick’s brain, that’s the only explanation. “There’s no ‘top half’, Nightwing,” Bruce says, voice rougher than he means it to be but it’s been gnawing at the back of his brain for weeks and weeks now that Dick somehow thinks he’s lesser. “You’re not less smart, you’re not less capable, you’re not less skilled; you _are_ the one I trust the most.” It’s just tonnes of trust in Dick for all things, ranging from driving the BatWing responsibly to being the final word on decisions that need making while Bruce is indisposed. 

Dick just smiles, but he doesn’t look particularly happy. “You say all these things to make a man feel good ‘bout himself, B, but if you trust me so much why _the hell_ won’t you listen to what I have to say?”

Ah.

It comes with unpleasant clarity, squatting in a rock outcropping with the shadow of the mining facility looming in the distance, that if Dick has doubts in himself, how much of a hand did Bruce have in putting them there and letting the rot propagate?

He swallows, and chokes back that sense of perpetual righteousness that comes part and parcel with the cowl. It's one thing to be a controlling asshole in the League when he's the only unpowered human in a room of well-meaning dumbasses who could destroy the world if they woke up in a Mood one morning.

It’s another to be a controlling asshole to his son, who is twice the man he’ll ever be, whose primary character trait is a fundamental goodness that would put Superman to shame.

Dick’s not perfect, but he is damn, damn good, and Bruce won’t lose out to just listen. 

He’s been doing a lot of that as Bat-Erdene and neither he nor the children of Inner Mongolia have been led astray, so out in the prairie maybe he can afford to put his money where his mouth is and more aggressively demonstrate how much he believes in Dick.

So Bruce leans back a little, makes an effort to lower his hackles, and breathes deeply. 

“I’m sorry,” he says and he means it for many, many things. “I’m listening.”

The plan is chaotic and flashy and buck-fucking-wild, which Bruce has come to realise is quite the done thing with a mission with Dick at the helm. Nightwing can go undercover with the best of them, but given an endless arsenal of makeshift weapons, Bruce would go for a needle, Jason would go for a hammer, and Dick would set fire to the barrel of firecrackers and laugh in the aftermath.

This is that. Late on a mid-pandemic night, the mine is empty of all but the barest security team on the surface. Sneaking past them and down the shaft into where the green veins glow like a ghastly dream isn’t particularly difficult, nor is planting the special bomb charges they’ve cobbled together from BatWing parts. This deep underground his communicator struggles to keep a line to Dick who’s working in the main office, but an emergency would be accompanied by dramatic explosions so things are going to plan, probably.

He sets up the 4th charge at the east side of the mineshaft, and starts making his way back up. He would feel a _lot_ better about this if they had more charges, or just more resources in general, but on a shoestring budget Dick sure knows how to make a little plan look like a big one. 

They’ve taken out as much from the energy cell of the Wing that they can while still having enough juice to get them home, and when life only gives you four radioactive bombs, you make do. They’re lucky to have caught on Luthor so quick; the mine’s still new enough and small enough to make a two-man operation feasible, but if they hadn’t caught wind of this when they did…

It doesn’t bear thinking about, so he puts it aside and scales the steep sides of the mine. With the black earth all around he’s more spectral than usual, so thoroughly a shadow that he even gets the drop on Dick when he climbs into the office, face smudged with dirt. 

“Jesus, B, you look 175% more wraith-like than usual,” Dick says, hands flying across the keyboard. Trying to leave a fake digital trail of corporate espionage and malpractice stretching over several months over the course of a night is a steep ask, but it’s the same with the bombs and Bruce’s darkened eyebrows and ambiguous twang.

They only need the look of the thing to hold out _just_ enough. 

“I’ve planted the charges. Ready when you are.”

With a dramatic flourish Dick signs off on the final incriminating e-mail, and sends it off with a dramatic slam of the enter key. “All the guards have been sent off, and there's nobody here except for you and me. Give it to me straight, big guy; on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely is this gonna work out for us?”

Bruce pulls out the remote detonator he’d cobbled together using a spare burner phone and the gate key fob for the Manor, and hands it to Dick to do the honours. “Wherever we land on the scale, we can work with it.” It’s like the idea of a doctor-y masquerade; sometimes being out and loud is the best way to stay hidden, and it’s somehow a new lesson for this old Bat. “It’s a crazy plan, but it’s a good one.”

Dick beams at him, and even in the full Nightwing get-out, it’s easy to tell he’s genuinely pleased. “Then let’s go go go before we let this place blow baby, blow!”

Sometimes Dick opens his mouth and what comes out is a ghost of a leer, a popped collar, and gelled-back hair, a Cool Guy caricature who’s so earnest he goes from Cool to Uncool and then right back to Cool just by sheer force of personality.

Bruce can’t help snorting in slight amusement; by a deep pit in the ground, who’ll judge him?

They get back to the Wing, get the engines running nice and warm, and from a perch high up in the air, they watch things go _ka-boom!_

An explosive(!) story spreads at a speed significantly greater than one plane, two men, and four horses, and by the time they’ve done their final round of checks and have arrived at Gantulga’s _ger_ to return his horses, even the herdsman is keen to let them in on the news.

At this point they’ve turned down dinner every single time they’ve been offered it, so when Gantulga insists that he wants to celebrate their safe return with some roast lamb and _arkhi_ , the alcoholic version of thin, clear liquid cheese, they can't and don't want to say no. They sit around the fireplace, the air filter humming happily in the background as they all tuck into a spectacular dinner, while the man shares the news.

“I’m sure you have already heard, but a big coal mine in Muu-us _exploded_ a few days ago. Natural gas accumulation, apparently, but my friend who lives there said the new mine was built on land it shouldn’t have been built on, so…” Gantulga shrugs, as though the outcome is obvious. Maybe it is. Mongolian spirits couldn’t be fans of Luthor if he was pumping out particles that were killing their children, after all. 

Bruce nods politely, knocking back the liquor and telling himself that he enjoys the taste of powerful rancid yoghurt. “We were already heading back here, but we heard about it. Did anyone get hurt?”

Gantulga shakes his head. “No, no locals were hurt. Apparently the company in charge of it was a big foreign one, and the government found radiation there so now there’s a big _international_ fight because the foreigners were secretly mining for things they shouldn't have.” The man cackles as he grabs a piece of lamb, peruses it and finds it to be of above-average quality, and drops it in his wife’s plate. “Good riddance to them. We have enough problems without outsiders interfering, eh, Bat-Erdene?”

“We certainly do have a lot of problems, but now at least there’s one less,” Bruce concedes diplomatically. 

Most of the way through the meal, little Idree coughs a little, and as one all four adults turn to look at the toddler in alarm. Gantulga’s wife gently rubs her back, frowning lightly. “She has been a lot better since you and the Doctor came to see her,” Zayaa says, then looks a little surprised when Dick asks for Idree in pretty good Mongolian.

While Dick looks over the girl, listening to her breathing with the stethoscope that has had pride of place around his neck these past few weeks, Gantulga looks at Bruce with some surprise. “The Doctor speaks our language now?”

Dick tells Zayaa in atrocious grammar but a passable accent that the girl appears to have just choked on a little chunk of vegetable, calming down the tiny toddler with hands that have looked after many a younger brother and Mongolian child. 

Gantulga grins at Bruce, smacks him heartily on the back. “Looks like the Doctor has learned the right words!”

Bruce doesn’t get a chance to reply, because Dick has turned and is beaming a million-watt smile directly into Gantulga’s face. “Of course,” Dick says, looking as at home in this warm, warm _ger_ in the plains as he does in his police officer's uniform, as he does in a tux at the Manor, as he does leaping off a building to apprehend a bad man. He reaches over, and smacks Bruce even harder on the back. “I had a good, good teacher.”

And that, well beyond the alcohol and the company and the wellness of thousands of children and the thorn they’ve shoved right into Lex’s side, is what goes straight to Bruce’s head, and he goes bright bright red much to the absolute delight of absolutely everyone. 

Dick raises his glass of _arkhi_ , a shit-eating grin on his face. “To good health and Bat-Erdene!”

Bruce can’t have that, so he raises his glass and says, calm and resolute,

“To good health and better children!”

And that’s that on that, thank you very much.

**Author's Note:**

> Quarantine is really rough when you're stuck stuck stuck in one place so when I wanted to write escapism I thought, what's better than horseback riding across endless grassy plains? Spiritually a successor to that time in [ Cuba](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23372743). I ended up doing a bonkers amount of research for this fic but if you're from the region and have pointers, give me a shout! And if you live somewhere Kinda Cool, please flex on me and let me Dream.
> 
> Accepting prompts and charity commissions over on my[ tumblr](https://cetaceans-pls.tumblr.com/post/161779740389/commission-info-and-masterlist). Hope you're taking care of yourselves in these kinda awful times, and if you've read this far I hope this took your mind off and away for a little bit.


End file.
